Barack Obama has violated the Constitution’s war-making power – reserved by Article I, Section 8, to Congress – from the moment he sent American troops into harm’s way without Congressional approval. He has been violating the War Powers Resolution since at least the 60th day of that campaign. And he has violated the most liberal reading of that act – the one Boehner has adopted as his own – since this weekend. Yet despite the letter Boehner authored last week, which the media presented as an “ultimatum,” Obama has neither obtained Congressional authorization nor removed our troops. Boehner’s letter weakly supplicated “I sincerely hope the Administration will faithfully comply with the War Powers Resolution,” but at least it seemed to set this weekend as a definitive cut-off point.

The “deadline” has come and gone, and Obama has not answered the most burning questions of the mission’s legality to anyone’s satisfaction. Instead, the president has thumbed his nose at Congress in general, Boehner in particular, and the American people at large, and the Speaker-cum-caddy has made no meaningful response whatsoever.

Obama insists the American role in Libya is too diminutive to constitute “hostilities,” so his action is perfectly legal. White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated his boss’s party line at Monday’s press conference, stating, “the War Powers Resolution does not need to be involved because the ‘hostilities’ clause of that resolution is not met.” However, soldiers in Libya are receiving an additional $25 a month in “imminent danger pay.” American drones still rain missiles down upon military targets. NATO is alternatelybombing Muammar Qaddafi’s home and killing the innocent Libyan civilians they are purportedly protecting. (We had to kill the civilians in order to save them?) NATO admitted (at least) one of its bombs went off target on Sunday, killing nine civilians in Tripoli, while allied bombs allegedly killed 15 civilians in Sorman on Monday.

Even Obama’s short-term fellow Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin, agrees Libya more than rises to the level of hostilities.

So, too, we have learned, do the best legal minds of Obama’s administration (not a coveted nor much-contested title, I assure you). In overruling his own lawyers, Obama rejected the considered conclusions of Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon’s general counsel, and Caroline Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The New York Times reported it is “extraordinarily rare” for any president to overrule the OLC. “Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.”

But then, nothing in the Obama administration transpires under “normal circumstances.”

Two former OLC lawyers outlined precisely how unusual the dismissal was….

A review of THE BLUEPRINT: OBAMA‘S PLAN TO SUBVERT THE CONSTITUTION AND BUILD AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY by Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski. (Lyons Press, 22.95, 304 pages.)

What we have here is a part-tutorial on the Constitution, part-legal brief for making Barack Obama a one-term president and (some would argue) a credible case of grounds for impeachment of the president, though that option is not emphasized by the authors.

In The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency, authors Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski trace a pattern seen elsewhere in the world outside our United States. They find:

Mr. Obama is annoyed some Cabinet nominees have difficulty at Senate confirmation hearings because of their radical views. No problem: Just appoint unconstitutional confirmation-avoiding czars to do the dirty work, with some Cabinet officials as figureheads.

The president is nonplussed that courts have cited constraints on a president’s reach for unconstitutional powers. No problem: Just ignore the courts.

He is irked that some U.S. laws that he is sworn to uphold are an inconvenience. No problem: Just appoint judges who will cite international law to his liking.

Some well-informed readers may bypass this book, reasoning they already know Mr. Obama disdains the Constitution and seeks an imperial presidency. Perhaps the publishers could have crafted a more personalized “hit-between-the-eyes” title. However, the reader will find nuggets of information that are in fact “sensational.”

If the above-cited record of the president suggests a police state mindset, a comment out of his own mouth won’t lay that concern to rest.

In a speech Mr. Obama delivered in the 2008 campaign, the candidate intoned, “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve national security objectives that we have set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded.”

Despite longstanding attempts to redefine Barack Obama as a down-the-middle centrist, Obama’s radical colors keep showing. Just today, the media announced he is standing by his nominations of the most conspicuous advocate of health care rationing, Dr. Donald Berwick, and a revolutionary in black robes named Goodwin Liu.

“The president stands firmly behind the nomination of Don Berwick because he’s far and away the best person for the job, and he’s already doing stellar work,” according to Jay Carney, White House spokesman and trendy-word-user. Carney said Americans should support the “stellar” Berwick, because he is “implementing delivery system reforms that will save billions in excess costs and save millions of lives.” This tranquil-sounding phrase means Berwick is pressing forward with ObamaCare. A full 42 Republicans wrote a letter asking Berwick be withdrawn because of his….

On election day 2010, more than 70 percent of Oklahoma voters approved State Question 755, which forbids state courts from considering international law or Islamic religious law in pending court cases. However, that measure has been held in judicial limbo by a judicial activist appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton. The ridiculous decision can only be explained by the fact that the chief district judge of the western district of Oklahoma, Vicki Miles-LaGrange – who serves for life – is a lifelong beneficiary of Affirmative Action, a thoroughgoing mediocrity, and a committed devotee of reverse discrimination.

Prohibiting Theocracy is Unconstitutional?

Whatever controversy the election has sparked, it was not provoked by the text of the law itself. The amendment requires courts to:

rely on federal and state law when deciding cases. It forbids courts from considering or using international law. It forbids courts from considering or using Sharia Law.

Although media coverage has focused on its banning of Islamic law, known as Shari’a, its first clause is as important. An ever-increasing number of judges – including a five-member majority of sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices – cite foreign law as the equal of the U.S. Constitution. This serves the Obama administration and the Legal Left’s purpose of replacing the constitution with globalist economic and social views. Oklahoma acted prudently in banning the practice from its state courts. The amendment simply requires judges to use the law and the constitution as their guide instead of importing foreign legal sources that advance judicial activist aims.

Prohibiting judges from using Islamic religious law to decide secular cases should be less controversial yet. Any attempt to substitute religious tradition – especially the religion of a tiny minority of Americans that conflicts with the historical Christian faith of this nation’s Founding Fathers – would be a glaring violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. State law, the state constitution, and the U.S. Constitution are the legally binding authorities in Sooner State courts.

Muneer Awad of the Oklahoma state chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) immediately sued to keep the state from implementing the overwhelmingly popular measure. And so far, he has won.

Somehow Vicki Miles-LaGrange saw in this measure, not an attempt to protect the legal basis of her profession, but an insidious attack on innocent Muslims….